Shimla faces acute drinking water crisis

Shimla: The state capital is heading towards water scarcity as civic authorities have decided to ration water supply to its residents. The town is reeling under acute water shortage. Most of the water channels that were meeting water requirements of the town had dried up.

Against a daily requirement of 45 MLD of water, the city is getting only 32 MLD from all the sources under the IPH department. Even this 32 MLD water does not reaches the residents as around 3 MLD of water is wasted due to leakage. As per sources around 2 MLD of water is wasted in Dhalli alone where the IPH department has not been able to plug the leakage in the supply line for the past 3 years.

”The water now would be supplied every alternate day. This would remain effective till the onset of monsoons,” Assistant Municipal Commissioner KK Sharma said.

Against the daily requirement of 45 million litres (MLD), the civic body was getting 26 to 33 MLD. To bridge the gap between the demand and supply, water rationing was the only option left with the corporation, the official added.

Majority of the hoteliers have deployed tankers to meet the water crisis in the city. The irony is the water supplied by these tankers is not from any clean sources. Most of the tankers can be seen lined up on the Shimla bypass road where dirty and waste water of Shimla city ends up. There is hardly any check on the quality of water being supplied to the city hotels, fearing an outbreak of water related diseases.